Before letting me get on the big yellow bus for the first time, my mom shared with me her mantra for school as well as life: “Work hard. Be quiet. Obey your elders.”
She also gave me a little white takeaway bag from Chung’s, our family restaurant, to give to my teacher. It contained some of our best treats: fortune cookies, oolong tea, a pair of pink chopsticks. My mom may have believed in meritocracy, but she wasn’t above a little bribery too.
With gift bag in hand, I ran through the halls of Brace-Lederle, the elementary school closest to our home near Eight Mile Road in Southfield, Michigan—a suburb of Detroit. I had one goal in mind: making new friends. In Chinatown, where our restaurant was located, there were other kids to play with, but I was the youngest in that gang. I wanted friends my own size. In school, my brothers Craig and Chris had each made friends with another set of Asian brothers, the Chos. I wanted my own Cho brother.
By the time I found my homeroom, which was all the way at the very end of the hall, it was full. My eyes bounced around as I admired the blue-green globe, the American flag, and the hamster in the tank by the window. I took in the two dozen unfamiliar faces. I started to sweat. No one looked like a Cho. In fact, there weren’t any Asians at all—no Chinese, no Filipinos, no Indians. Just Black and white bodies. This was definitely not Chinatown.
I grew up around Detroit, a famously divided city, so race came up often.
On the playground every day, the boys jockeyed for control of the courts, chanting, “Fight, fight between a Black and white.” Unsure which side to choose and hoping we could all play together, I’d give a half-hearted “Go get ’em.” Both sides considered my neutrality un-acceptable; they taunted me with bars of “Ching-Chong Chinaman” and fake karate chops. Playing the role of Switzerland only turned me into Swiss cheese.
To avoid further conflicts, I sometimes stayed inside with my teacher, Mrs….
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